1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for capturing, storing, and distributing product data. More particularly, the present invention relates to capturing, storing, and distributing data suitable for use in electronic catalogs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Manufacturers and suppliers of products have traditionally distributed paper catalogs to market their products to resellers and consumers. However, such traditional marketing tools are costly. In addition to the cost of the materials with which each catalog is manufactured, postage is required to mail each catalog to a potential purchaser. Moreover, the potential market base of traditional catalogs is limited by the mailing list maintained by the individual manufacturer or reseller. With the advent and increasing popularity of the Internet, suppliers have access to a much larger potential customer base. Through the Internet, the market base of manufacturers and resellers may be maximized while the associated overhead may potentially be dramatically reduced. As a result, providing catalogs to end-users in electronic form through the Internet has started to become a viable alternative or addition to traditional print catalogs. However, for electronic commerce to be successful, product information must be made available in an accurate and efficient manner to enable consumers to make well-informed purchase decisions.
Current electronic catalogs are typically little more than electronic versions of print catalogs. Although such electronic catalogs are useful and have been growing in popularity, they don't tend to deliver significantly more product information than print catalogs. Thus, they don't take advantage of one of the biggest potential advantage that electronic catalogs have over print catalogs. That is, the ability to deliver significantly more product information than their cousins the print catalogs. This is unfortunate since consumer purchase decisions are guided in large part by the product information that is readily accessible to the consumer. One reason that current electronic catalogs typically offer little more product information than print catalogs is that most resellers consider it prohibitively expensive to gather extensive product information and then make such information available in electronic form. However, due to the vast amount of information available on the Internet in recent years, consumer expectations have increased dramatically. Therefore electronic retailers that are able to provide more product information and a better ability for consumers to compare products will have a competitive advantage.
In a traditional chain of transactions, a manufacturer sells its products to a distributor for distribution to resellers who then sell the products directly to consumers. Although manufacturers have access to the most detailed information regarding products that they sell to distributors, the information that is ultimately accessible by potential end-users is often limited. Moreover, manufacturers, distributors and resellers often publish data with varying levels of detail to describe features of the same product. For instance, a reseller may simply advertise the availability of a particular computer at an advertised cost while another reseller or a distributor may provide specific details regarding the same computer such as the type and number of ports included. In addition to the varying content of the information supplied by different sources, the information is often structured very differently. The lack of standardization regarding the content and structure of product information will become evident with the examination of any advertisement or web site. Due to the lack of localized, structured information, it is often difficult to compare competitive products.
More specifically, in order to compare similar products that are available from different manufacturers, a consumer typically must perform lengthy searches. As a result, it is a time-consuming and difficult process for a consumer to access the same information for a variety of products, particularly when the products are not available from the same manufacturer. Therefore, electronic retailers that are able to provide more consumers with a better ability to compare similar products from different manufactures will have a competitive advantage.
One more problem encountered by both print and electronic catalogs is that the product information they do have is often inaccurate and/or out of date. In order to acquire accurate and detailed information for use in catalogs, product information is often obtained from the manufacturer or reseller of the product. For instance, a standard product description in which standard features of the product are described is often supplied by the product manufacturer. However, in today's technologically fast paced environment, manufacturers are continually upgrading product features as well as corresponding product descriptions. With these frequent technological advances there is a high probability that catalogs produced by resellers will contain outdated information. Accordingly, it would be desirable if an up-to-date product description were made available to suppliers and resellers to ensure the accuracy and completeness of such catalog entries.
Still another limitation of most catalogs is that they are not multi-lingual. That is, most catalogs are written in one language and are really only suitable for use by customers comfortable using that particular language. Typically, it takes a significant amount of time and energy to write a catalog for use in a second language, thus the few catalogs that are multi-lingual tend to provide very limited product information. The lack of detailed multi-lingual catalog product occurs even when the manufacturer has provided detailed multi-lingual product information. The difficulty in creating information rich multi-lingual catalogs has proven to be a significant deterrent to selling across borders, particularly in places like Europe where there are a number of languages used in a small geographic area.
In view of the foregoing, improved mechanisms for gathering, organizing and delivering product information to catalog creators would be highly desirable. Further, the ability to deliver such information in a multi-lingual form to create multi-lingual catalogs would be an additional benefit. Additionally, improved mechanisms for enabling product comparison and/or delivering would be desirable.